For Your Grocer’s Pleasure: Instacart

If last month I tried to get you to learn a new language (how’s that going, by the way?), this month I feel no regret at all recommending that it’s high time you consider ordering your groceries while seated on your ass in the dry warmth of your office, listening to any number of the Ted Talks that have been suggested for you (perhaps even by you) in a recent post, using the very same smart phone that is ordering said groceries to look up the nutritional value of the items you’re cart-storing.

Instacart is exactly what it sounds like unless what you’re thinking it sounds like is an app that promotes your buying Instagram photos in bulk. It is an app, yes, but it allows you to instantly update your digital grocery shopping cart with a deluge of products from any number of the grocery stores in your neighborhood that tend to make the natural occurrence of feeding yourself seem like a savage, unrewarding task.

Example: I tried to find golden berries at Whole Foods last week to no avail. Then I looked them up on Instacart WHILE AT WHOLE FOODS and within seconds, poof, I became the proud almost-owner of so many different variations of the food, I thought about beginning to measure my self worth in exotic dried fruit. Yesterday, I ordered three avocados that came in such pristine shape, you might think they were delivered directly from Mexico and I’ll have you know that since downloading the app, I’ve not eaten a single banana peel. Not one!

So consider this a PSA in addition to just a recommendation. Instacart will make grocery shopping feel kind of like you’re recreationally browsing Instagram (so many food photos on both). It might make you a little bit poorer in the pocket but will also indubitably render you rich at heart, in stomach and where the golden berries may or may not make you shit 18 karats all year round.

Image shot by Armin Morbach for Tush Magazine